A Private Haunting Read online

  ‘Why, thank you kindly, sir.’ Jonas scanned the room and picked out Eggers’s two kids, Laura and Eloise. Zero chance of seeing their father helping out at The Hub. Too many porridgy do-gooders, he once said. Lacey was down by the stage. She smiled his way, gave a little wave.

  Jonas loved these kids, he surely did, that wonderful openness which should be bottled, sold as precious balm and the world instantly transformed. An ongoing project was wooden-spoon-making for crying out loud. How could that compete with iPhones and Instagram for teenage attention? But it did. Lacey still couldn’t get the crook knife technique and came over with an exaggerated pout. Jonas smiled and stood close behind her, leaning her forward and placing her elbows on her knees. Carve away from the body, see, slow and easy.

  Later, he ducked out for a smoke, looking up to a crescent moon. The kids. They knew how to find south now, just imagine a line connecting the horns and extend it down to the horizon.

  But north, north was where it was at, whatever at might be. He moved his gaze to the Big Dipper, Merak and Dubhe, the two outer stars in the bowl, following a tick-tack line north to Polaris.

  What an epic sky. Crammed with a trillion stars but never called messy. So why was his house? He pictured the mess growing and growing, his private universe expanding towards inevitable entropy. Again, Jonas regretted the cleaner advert. And once more he didn’t.

  ‘I should take responsibility.’

  The auburn-haired dish-washer paused as she was stuffing the rubbish bag in the bin.

  ‘But I’m a lazy, lazy man.’

  Jonas walked, round by the nature park. 10 pm passed, the moon through birch lighting the path. He sat down and leaned against the old yew and wondered about late walkers. There may be a few.

  Hello there!

  They would be surprised, sure, but not spooked. It was summertime, people indulged. If coming across a smiling man under a tree at ten o’clock on a summer night was not exactly a given, it was at least much more explicable than on a winter’s night, when a meeting moved the threat from eccentric to sociopath. Jonas should come back on December 21st, wait for the walkers with a fire-torch, two lines of mud smeared under his eyes.

  He laughed and clapped his hands. The night sounds immediately stilled. He counted sixteen before the creatures stirred again; a blackbird’s short burst of song, something in the rhododendrons to his left. The breeze rose and thin saplings moved in the darker distance on the other side of the reedy meadow. Like people dancing, witches making ritual preparations for tomorrow’s Jonsok. Did they know he was here? Did they watch? He’d raise a glass to them when he got to The Black Lion. The final part of his own ritual. The Hub, the nature park, the pub. Some would find banality in this but Jonas knew when to extend the parameters. Last year he’d bivvied in the woods when the first snow came in January, swum in the river in midnight July.

  ‘So, who’s coming?’

  ‘Open house as ever.’

  ‘You having a barbeque?’

  ‘When have I not had a barbeque?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you come one of these years then, Sam? Be good to get some new faces there.’

  ‘You Vikings like your meat, eh?’

  ‘Like a bit of meat myself.’ This last from Clara, a hand on Jonas’s shoulder as she passed, an exaggerated wink suggesting a history, a sometime affair that existed only in her head.

  Old Sam missed it, lost in contemplation. Tiny sweat bubbles on his nose. ‘I remember that from Orkney. The war. There was always meat. Lamb or beef. Always a bite of meat.’

  Jonas smiled. Five minutes for Sam to turn the conversation to the war, his posting to the northern isles for the Arctic convoys; bannocks and local hooch, farmers’ daughters in cold barns.

  ‘I liked it up there. Always felt at home, you know. I don’t know what you’re doing down here.’

  ‘I’m not from there, Sam. You should know this by now. I was born in Larvik. Worked in Bergen.’

  The old man knew, of course he did. He just wanted Jonas to keep providing the cues, give him another way back to 1943. Jonas liked these rituals, the quick raise of Clara’s eyebrows, here we go again. Too much was flux. Time should be always found to circle back.

  Sam’s eyes glittered. ‘Knew a fisherman in Stromness. Helluva boozer. He’d worked the Shetland Bus. You have to hand it to those boys, pitching across the Atlantic with guns and money for Norway. No protection, not like us on the convoys. Cold as Death’s bad brother but we had the Navy port and starboard. Nothing like that for them. I’m boring you again.’

  ‘No, you’re not, Sam.’

  The old man went on, walking again the Stromness cobble, a sky even clearer than tonight’s, this young southerner who only knew hedgerows and hawthorn, the lap of gentle rivers, keen to stay awhile in a different landscape because he’d seen the connection between Rollright and the Ring of Brodgar, felt the satisfaction in knowing these stones were thrown up at the same time, all over northern Europe, warm with this comfort and whisky as he picked a way through the reels and outside to the cold, hunching his neck into the heavy jumper, Graemsay across the water, where croft-monsters castigated drunken husbands and belonging never ebbed with the tide, and what about him, could he make this place his home, as the Viking ships had come ghost-sailing round the point and made it theirs?

  ‘Those northern lights. You know them too, Jonas. Colours in the sky like God’s at the watercolours.’

  He bought Sam another pint.

  ‘There was a girl too.’

  ‘Isn’t there always! I’ll see you at the party?’

  ‘Sure you will. Sure.’

  But Sam wouldn’t come. Jonas glanced in the window as he left the pub. The old man in his usual chair. Walled in. The bar he never left and the past that wouldn’t let him be.

  ‘Jonas!’

  Eggers weaved towards him from the smoking shelter. A few faces peered out. People he didn’t know and a couple of lingering looks. One of them turned away and spat on the ground.

  ‘Chinese,’ said Eggers.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Getting a Chinese.’

  They walked. Eggers had managed eight pints in the four hours since Hogg had dropped him off at The Black Lion. He told Jonas he didn’t like going home, back to her and those crappy TV shows and sure, getting pissed didn’t help, made it worse prob’ly, but what was really worse, Jonas, hmmm, you tell me man, sitting there sober as and wanting to scream, or taking the fuckin initiative and off to the pub and I know, I know, it means an argument but an argument means I can get away, upstairs, and you’re lucky Jonas, lucky to live alone.

  ‘Maybe I am.’

  ‘You ARE!’

  He left Eggers spring-rolling outside the Jade Dragon and wandered home, to stand in the living room as the eco-bulbs gradually revealed the bomb site. Yep, old Jonas sure was lucky.

  What woman could resist?

  JJ Cale helped him tidy. Steady background beat, the Roksan separates and Wharfedale speakers he hadn’t skimped on, Bose surround-sound like a blues-womb. This got him thinking about women again, or the lack thereof. He slumped in his pants and cracked a beer. How long had it been? Would there ever be another if they could see him now?

  Clara crept into his mind and he contemplated for a while, got a bit hard before leaping up. Old JJ sure liked the women, songs like incantations that had him horny for Clara for crying out loud, so get over there and change the music. Had to be something less suggestive, Jonsok was coming so maybe something pagan-fringed. But Death in Vegas was too dark, DJ Fresh too frantic, the bass shaking loose his internal organs, gotta look after this old body.

  He settled on the Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet, in honour of old Martinsson. He used to blare out The Stones when they were sitting in his kitchen knocking back the akevitt before heading down to the beach bonfires. Ah, Jonsok. The celebration of the summer solstice, the final defeat of winter’s darkness by the Sun
God. Jonas’s parties were an import, sure, but some imports catch on. Jonsok would follow where boom boxes, breakdancing and the mullet had blazed a trail. Five years ago only three people came to his first party. That was fine, that was cool, no one really knew him then. The next year seven or so, a few kids from The Hub.

  Then fourteen. A watershed. You can’t impose a tradition; it has to be earned. Look at Morris dancing. The foot-bells didn’t start shs-shshing overnight. Someone did it once, maybe for kicks. But do it again and again and you get a tradition. Hence Jonas’s open door and the midnight bonfire, the flames fanned until the dawn. Just like home, almost. At home he wouldn’t be the automatic figure of fun, or disdain, as he was to the men outside the pub.

  At home, he would be something else altogether. They didn’t need to know about that here.

  Jonas had almost blown it from the start, his September arrival too sudden and too keen. Blame the mushrooms. And the beech nuts and blackberries, the rosehips and rowans. So why not a foraging walk? He put out flyers, introduced himself at the supermarket, the Post Office, and the café, thrusting leaflets into one bemused hand as he shook the other. In a misjudged burst of enthusiasm, he handed some out in The Mucky Duck on a Friday night. A few young guys made fun of him. Asked what the fuck he was doing here.

  Only Mark turned up, his interest genuine, as was his suggestion that Jonas do something at The Hub. And Jonas’s disappointment at the lack of interest in the walk evaporated.

  He bumped into the guys from The Mucky Duck again, early December. Walking along the street a hard-packed snowball hit him full in the face. He tried to laugh it off but they followed him, shouting Down With Thor, the snowballs hitting harder, laughter becoming cruel.

  Thor.

  Or the Viking.

  Sometimes even strangers would shout out. How’s our local Viking? How’s it goin, Thor? One time a woman came up to him at the fete and asked him to show her his mighty hammer. The boyfriend was not best pleased and sometimes even gods have to make a swift exit.

  But hey, some of the locals had nicknames: Crooner Joe, Randy Clara... It was a sign not of difference but of belonging. A nickname meant you were a character. If they wanted to call Jonas Thor or the Viking then what’s the problem? He was so much of a local he had two nicknames.

  ‘I should be flattered.’

  The one-eyed doll was unconvinced. Sat there on the speaker, shifting with the throbs of Bill Wyman’s bass. He didn’t know what to do with the damn thing. Re-inter it in the loft? There were thirty new centimetres of insulation up there so at least it’d be snug. Dithering meant no decision and the doll would soon be subsumed into the mess. He’d have to hide it during the cleaner interviews. It was probably an HR rule. Prospective new employers and single men should not, repeat not, reveal one-eyed dollies to the interviewees.

  ‘Confucius said that. Does Li Po agree?’

  Like the doll, the figure in the scroll painting above the fireplace said nothing. He and Eva had bought it on their honeymoon in China from a wizened old man outside a Taoist temple. That gleam in his milky eyes, Jonas had never decided if it meant ‘got you, round-eye sucker’ or ‘this painting will bring great merit’. He edged towards the latter. As had been pointed out, and as Jonas himself would likely agree, he was a trusting fellow, mystically-inclined.

  He put his nose close to Li Po, who kept on sweeping the jetty in front of the lakeside pagoda. There were a few trees in the background, a hint of high misty mountains, and nothing to suggest that the figure was indeed the famous Chinese poet. Then again, there was nothing to suggest that he wasn’t. Jonas had never told Eva that he often stood in front of the scroll, imagining himself as a Taoist monk, living free and solitary with Li Po’s spontaneity.

  Some things, truly, should remain unsaid.

  Anyway, Jonas had long decided he wasn’t cut out to be a wandering Taoist poet. Cultural determinism was the final nail, the idea too quixotic even for Jonas, a man brought up in the land of salt cod and trolls. Not that he then shunned Li Po. That would be rude. As rude as having snowballs hurled at him. He’d turned the other cheek but one hit him on that side too.

  Three

  Fletcher was talking to a man called John Smith. Probably the most common name in the country.

  He wondered if this was the man’s real name, or whether he couldn’t be bothered making up something more interesting, like Jean de Havilland Smythe. Then again, in this part of the world you could actually run into someone with that name. He’d heard a posh mother trilling for her children in the supermarket the other day: Zebedee, Xenephon, come along now!

  He usually avoided pubs, or found himself escorted out as soon as he entered. Some had told him he stank. All granted themselves the right to stare. But tonight he felt confident and confidence was key. You had to decide that you belonged. Still, even though Smith had no way of recognising his name, his first instinct was to claim another. Taylor or Davidson, Brown. Instead, out came Fletcher. He told himself he was just imagining it, the hesitation before Smith said pleased to meet you, the flicker in the eyes.

  ‘You want another?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear!’

  Fletcher watched him go and looked round. He’d chosen this table in The Black Lion deliberately. NW corner, 180⁰ sweep from the main door to the toilets, the bar in the middle.

  The pub was busy, the heatwave driving people out of doors. None of them knew a thing about real heat, how it crawled across your body like ants and left a rash in the crotch. Their ignorance was like a test. Again, he told himself to relax, as they were relaxing, a few cold beers to cool down; women in cotton dresses bulging at the stomach, men with cargo shorts and Nikes, ankle socks white as their legs. Back and forth they went with their slopping trays.

  Smith returned. Fletcher studied his close-cropped, military-style haircut and imagined a DVD collection of movies by bald Hollywood action stars: Bruce Willis, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel. His favourite film was bound to be Top Gun and he was probably gay. He talked incessantly about himself, as if afraid that when he stopped he might disappear. Fletcher had met many people like this, socially maladjusted and given to envy.

  ‘Look out, here he comes. The Viking.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Guy by the door. He’s a Norwegian. Jonas Morten-something.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He has these parties.’

  ‘What kind of parties?’

  ‘Wanky ones.’

  ‘Wanky?’

  ‘Thinks he’s popular.’

  Smith burbled on. Then he started saying other things, insinuations that were much more interesting. But when Smith started repeating himself he decided to leave, Smith following him outside for a smoke. He headed up the street but as soon as Smith turned away Fletcher doubled back. When Mortensen emerged, he was watching from the shadows beside a plumber’s van. He saw Smith spit on the ground just as the Norwegian passed.

  Fletcher followed Mortensen back to End Point. The dusk light gave a smoky poignancy to the house. Echoes of the long gone. Children who had once played, men and women who had died. In time he might uncover all these stories. No one else knew the house like Fletcher did.

  Built in the 1920s, End Point had once been just that, the last house of the long terrace on the north-eastern side of Pound Lane. A road had now been built alongside its eastern wall, allowing access to a new, red-brick estate. On the other side of this access road, fifties semis and the occasional bungalow stretched down the remainder of Pound Lane.

  When Mortensen opened the front door Fletcher continued on, following the pavement around the gable end. At the end of the wall was a low fence and behind that a line of thick Leyland cypresses hid the back garden. Fletcher looked round then vaulted the fence. Keeping to the trees, he turned two right angles until he was in the south-eastern corner. The cypress was thinner here but the dark heavy. Only a floodlight could pick him out.
He peered through the fronds. A large stack of bonfire wood had been piled in the middle of the lawn. To his right was a ramshackle shed and a tall wooden fence, giving privacy from the neighbours. Crossing the lawn would leave him exposed to any overlooking window for about three seconds before he reached the sun room that led through to the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later Mortensen opened the sun room door. He bowed deeply to the garden, almost as if acknowledging Fletcher, then stepped onto the grass and settled into the Lotus position. Fletcher remembered meditation once being described to him as positive distraction.

  When Mortensen went back inside Fletcher stayed in the trees. He could pray, he thought, feeling his aunt’s squeezing grip on his shoulder, pushing him onto his knees before bed.

  As I lay me down to sleep...

  His little sister in the top bunk, peering down on his humiliation. A chip off the old bitch, Iris never had to be reminded to say her prayers. Fletcher saw her on the lawn. She sat down where the Norwegian had, a very serious look on her face but trying hard not to smirk. She lifted her hands up high, thumb and forefinger making a circle and the other digits splayed, a parody of Fletcher’s Buddhist gestures. She said ommmm and then came the laughter, as she had laughed at him last night in The Skull, like what on earth are you doing here?

  The cypress shifted in a quick breeze, his sister’s face hidden and revealed again. His stomach cramped, heat in the face. He had time to brace for the sinking. He had time to sit down and be glad of the dark and no one to see him but her, always her. He called it the Watching.

  You cannot understand. My being here. All you know ended at the age of fourteen. You are trapped in childhood. Hopscotch and school-days. Holidays at the seaside. Two pence shuffle and crazy golf, you loved crazy golf, always pestering our uncle. Up at seven and can we play now, can we? You’re delighted I’ve made camp at the old crazy golf course down by the river. One of the best in the land, they said, once upon a time. And I see you there as back then, club in hand. You’re aware of the older girls, hanging out with friends and not parents, but not too aware, a year or so removed from full-on awkwardness, from going down to the beach, under the salty timbers of the broken down pier to smoke and drink cider, feel the hands of the boys wander downwards, down there, down there, that place you are not sure of, drowsing to the calm dazzle of the silvered sea and watching the pedalos, the pedalos like swans, beautiful swans. And that other girl in a far-away land, she too deserves crazy golf and pedalos, surely everyone does! Although she would understand so little of it, being a child of strange customs, mud shacks and flies, stabbing winters and broiling summers. As I too understand so little of her, finding her only in the familiarity of you. I see your childhood in her eyes as she lies in the dirt of Sangin bazaar, I see your memories flicker in her eyeballs before they roll back that final time. Seaside and crazy golf. She’s remembered! She’s remembered those holidays. She loved them! So far away now it is painful, long before today, this cold winter morning, long before her dark hair fanned out on rust-coloured ground among the warm spilling grey of her brains and her bright, bright, fourteen-year-old blood.